1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a reproduction device and display control method enabling a playback screen to be switched to a list screen corresponding to different attributes.
2. Description of the Art
In recent years, the increasingly greater capacity of recording media and advances made in technology for compression of music, movies, still images, etc. have made it possible to store an enormous amount of content data in the recording medium of a portable player. The increase in the amount of the content data which can be stored in recording media in this way has made it necessary to develop a system for efficiently searching for and displaying the content data desired by the user on the screen. As one such method, there can be explained the method of searching for track names, album names, and artist names of the content data by their initials. For example, when searching by the artist name, the user finds the desired artist name from an alphabetical list of artist names.
In such a portable player, the list of attribute data is hierarchically structured. The user searches for content data desired to be played by for example selecting attributes of tracks to be played one by one from lists of attribute data such as “GENRE”, “ARTIST NAME”, “ALBUM NAME”, and “TRACK NAME”. Many such portable players of the art have been designed to display information concerning the content data being played, for example, the artist name, album name, track name, and other attribute data, while playing the content data retrieved by the above procedure.
In such a portable player, however, where it is desired to find and play other content data while playing certain content data, that is, for example, where it is desired to play content data of another album of the same artist as the content data being played, it is necessary to return once to the uppermost menu screen and then again retrieve the content data or redo the retrieval by going back over the lists used for reaching the content data being played (namely in the above case, select another album by going back over the lists in the sequence of “TRACK NAME” and “ALBUM NAME”). Namely, in portable players of the art, there has been no system enabling selection on the playback screen. It was only possible to return to the uppermost menu screen or return to the immediately preceding list screen.
As an example of the art, see Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 2001-76415.